" In the New Statesman two years later, when there had still been no convictions for the crime, Peter Tatchell, gay human rights campaigner, said, " In the days leading up to his murder in south London in November 2000, he was subjected to vicious homophobic abuse and assaults ," and asked why the authorities had ignored this before and after his death.

His father, Gordon Tatchell, was a lathe operator in an engineering factory while his mother, Mardi, was a housewife and later worked in a biscuit factory.

Prompted by the impending hanging of Ronald Ryan in 1967, Tatchell went round his local area daubing slogans against the hanging, an action that was not identified as his until he revealed it in an interview nearly 30 years later.

Tatchell later said " I'm not deterred one iota from coming back to protest in Moscow.

In the 1970s and 1980s Tatchell was involved in anti-fascist campaigns, first against the National Front and later, after its formation, against the British National Party.

Two years later, Livingstone stated that he " probably shouldn't " have called Tatchell an " Islamophobe ", but defended his actions at the time by saying " in politics you engage with people which you have profound disagreements with ...", giving then-Mayor of Moscow Yury Luzhkov's support of London for the 2012 Olympics as vital to the bid's success in spite of Luzhkov's regular bans of Moscow Pride.

( It was suggested by some that Foot had confused Peter Tatchell with Peter Taaffe, then the leader of the Trotskyist Militant tendency, and that his denunciation was so strong that he could not later retract it without appearing weak.

) Foot later changed " endorsed member " to " endorsed candidate ", and at the next meeting of the Labour Party National Executive Committee, Tatchell was narrowly rejected as a candidate.

In a later interview, when the subject of Bermondsey came up, Sutch said that Tatchell " seemed to think all he needed to do to become the MP was turn up at the count.

Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell claimed to have met Crisp in 1974 and alleged that he was not sympathetic to the Gay Liberation movement of the time.

Tatchell claimed that Crisp asked him " What do you want liberation from?

member, Tatchell is sometimes taken to be the leader of the group, though he has never claimed this title, saying he is one among equals.

In a comment in The Independent in October 2003, Tatchell claimed the OutRage!

protest, which disrupted the Easter sermon by the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, with Tatchell mounting the pulpit to denounce what he claimed was Carey's opposition to legal equality for lesbian and gay people.

In late 2003 Tatchell acted as a press spokesman for the launch of the Zimbabwe Freedom Movement, which claimed to be a clandestine group within Zimbabwe committed to overthrowing the government of Robert Mugabe by force.

Ken Livingstone's invitation of Yusuf al-Qaradawi to address a conference on the wearing of the hijab led to a four year rift between Livingstone and Tatchell, who described Qaradawi as " rightwing, misogynist, anti-semitic and homophobic " and as someone who claimed to have liberal positions in order to deceive Western politicians.

In November 2005, Respect's second largest single financial donor, Dr Mohammad Naseem, was accused in an article by Peter Tatchell of being homophobic due to his senior position in the Islamic Party of Britain, which he claimed advocated the " banning of gay organisations " and the " execution of homosexuals ".

Such speculation increased after Labour lost the 1983 Bermondsey by-election, in which Peter Tatchell was its candidate, standing against a Tory, a Liberal ( eventual winner Simon Hughes ) and the right wing John O ' Grady, who had declared himself the " real " Labour candidate and fought an openly homophobic campaign against Tatchell.

In 2007 British activist Peter Tatchell was physically assaulted.

Tatchell was selected as Labour Party Parliamentary candidate for Bermondsey in 1981, and was then denounced by party leader Michael Foot for supporting extra-parliamentary action against the Thatcher government.

However, in December 2009 Tatchell announced he was standing down from the post due to brain damage he says was sustained from injuries by President Mugabe's bodyguards when Tatchell was trying to arrest him for the second time, and by neo-Nazis in Moscow while campaigning for gay rights, as well as from an accident on a bus.

In 2011, he was appointed the Director ( unsalaried ) of the human rights organisation, the Peter Tatchell Foundation.

Tatchell was born in Melbourne, Australia.

As a result he was unable to continue his formal education beyond a basic level and in 1968 at age 16 Tatchell started work as a designer, sign-writer and window-dresser in Melbourne's principal department stores, first Waltons and then Myer.

Tatchell was elected by fellow pupils as secretary of the Student Representative Council, and in his final year in 1968, as school captain, took the lead in setting up a scholarship scheme for Aborigines, and led a campaign for Aboriginal land rights.

In 1968 Tatchell began campaigning against the United States's and Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, which he believed was a war of aggression in support of a " brutal and corrupt dictatorship in Saigon which was notorious for the torture and execution of political opponents ".

During his time in GLF Tatchell was prominent in organising sit-ins at pubs that refused to serve " poofs " and protests against police harassment and the medical classification of homosexuality as an illness.

At the Annual General Meeting of the CLP in February 1980, the left group won control and Tatchell was elected as the CLP Secretary.

These were Lily Tomlin, a gay actress and comedian ; Peter Tatchell, a world-renowned gay rights campaigner ; Don Baxter, Executive Director of the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations at that time ; Bev Lange, Chief Executive Officer of the Bobby Goldsmith Foundation at the time, a former President of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, and a former co-chair of the Sydney Gay Games ; Lex Watson and Sue Wills, Campaign Against Moral Prosecution's ( CAMP ) first Co-Presidents ; and Hannah Williams and Savannah Supski, who had recently protested against the ban against same-sex couples at Hannah's Melbourne school formal.

From 25 to 27 May 2006, Tatchell attended the first Moscow Pride Festival at the invitation of Nikolai Alekseev whom he met at London Pride in July 2005.

Tatchell is critical of Muslim fundamentalism, and first wrote on the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in Britain in 1995.

The parade was attended by London mayor Ken Livingstone, Tory MP Alan Duncan, human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, and the first transgender MEP, Italian Vladimir Luxuria.

Raised as a Christian, Tatchell says that he " ditched faith a long time ago " and is an atheist.

Later the Militant tendency were cited as the reason for Tatchell's selection, but as Tatchell pointed out in his book The Battle for Bermondsey, they had at that time only a handful of members in the constituency, Tatchell had never been a member and Militant did not support his selection.

Tatchell describes the umbrella group Muslim Council of Britain as " anti-gay ", asking how " they expect to win respect for their community, if at the same time as demanding action against Islamophobia, they themselves demand the legal enforcement of homophobia ?".

" Tatchell was in and out of hospital at the time, as a result of the injuries he received at the hands of far-right assailants in Moscow.

The British activist Peter Tatchell says " The lesbian and gay community has a right to defend itself against public figures who abuse their power and influence to support policies which inflict suffering on homosexuals.

" Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell called for any damages paid out from the libel case to be donated to gay charities, claiming Williams ' legal actions had created the impression that it is " bad to be gay.

His interventions brought out considerable opposition to gay rights within and between different groups of national delegates including the British Communist Party and National Union of Students, which manifested itself in Tatchell being banned from conferences, having his gay rights leaflets confiscated and burned, interrogation by the secret police ( the Stasi ) and being threatened and violently attacked by fellow delegates — mostly communists.

Tatchell complained that " her appointment suggests the government does not take lesbian and gay rights seriously ", adding " Tony Blair would never appoint someone to a race-equality post who had a lukewarm record of opposing racism ".

In May 2007, Tatchell went to Moscow to support Moscow Pride and to voice his opposition to a city-wide ban on the planned gay pride march.

On 27 May 2007, Tatchell and other gay rights activists were attacked.

Tatchell was among the 32 campaigners who were arrested by police when they shouted slogans and unfurled banners urging gay rights in Russia.

Tatchell took part in many gay rights campaigning over issues such as Section 28.

Following the murder of actor Michael Boothe on 10 May 1990, Tatchell was one of thirty people to attend the inaugural meeting of the radical gay rights non-violent direct action group OutRage!

Mugabe became agitated when Tatchell told him that he was gay.

Tatchell defended himself by noting that the campaign was at the behest of the Jamaican gay rights group J-Flag, and the UK-based Black Gay Mens Advisory Group, with which he works closely.

Tatchell commented publicly that " legal action has created the impression he thinks it is shameful to be gay ".

Tatchell has described Sharia law as " a clerical form of fascism " on the grounds that it opposes democracy and human rights, especially for women and gay people.

The opposition of MCB Chairman Sir Iqbal Sacranie to homosexuality and registration of civil partnerships led Tatchell to observe " Both the Muslim and gay communities suffer prejudice and discrimination.

When the MCB boycotted Holocaust Memorial Day, partly because it included a commemoration of the gay victims of Nazism, Tatchell wrote that " the only thing that is consistent about the MCB is its opposition to the human rights of lesbians and gay men ".